Having taken on a rainbow challenge during the first lockdown, Calne SMaRTT, a British Triathlon affiliated club, took on a reindeer themed challenge during the second national lockdown.

Across the summer, the club set themselves a challenge to cover as many miles as they could and made their way around the world in teams representing the seven colours of the rainbow.

“We split the club into the different teams for a bit of rainbow inspired fun,” said Jennifer Colley, secretary at Calne SMaRTT.

“We started off by simply seeing which team could accumulate the most miles then, because I was in Washington DC at the time, we made the challenge into a race between the colours to try and swim, bike, run the distance from Calne to Washington.

“They managed this in a week, so we decided that we’d keep the challenge going and see which different places around the world we could make it to.”

The challenge lasted for a month and they racked up a total of 14,983 miles, pinpointing different places around the world where club members had lived, including France and Slovakia.

As well as the club challenge, one of their committee, Grahame Shaddick, completed the distance from Land’s End to John O’Groats with members encouraged to try and keep up with Grahame on his daily totals.

When the second lockdown came around, the challenge was given a festive twist and the Calne SMaRTT Reindeer Rampage was born.

“Lockdown 2 has seen us mix it up a bit to help our members carry on exercising,” Colley added. “Each week we allocate different reindeer with a distance, from one mile up to a marathon, and people pick a distance they want to cover that week.

“The idea behind it is that Rudolph has escaped and the winners are the people who chose the reindeer with the distance closest to how far away he managed to get.

“I ask someone not linked to the club to say how far he managed to get each week, and members basically have a lucky dip on how far they want to run that week to see if they select correctly and achieve the distance.”

Having got back to in-person activity before England’s second lockdown, the challenge helped to ensure that members kept active and connected even when they could only exercise with one other person.

“After being able to get back to training together, this second lockdown has been quite hard on some members,” Colley added.

“Being able to give them some motivation to get out and have a bit of fun doing it, as well as members being able to run with one other has helped to keep people’s spirits up despite the challenges that we’ve all faced.”